A reading can really personalize your ceremony. This is a lovely way to involve your loved ones, it is a great privilege to be asked to read at your wedding. As your Officiant, I am also honored to share your reading or readings as part of your ceremony. Inspiration for readings can come from anywhere - your favorite song, movie, poem, book, or webcomic.

The wedding industry is a wonderful and strange creature filled with people willing to share ideas rather than hoard them under lock and key. You will, without a doubt, become overwhelmed with the options available through a google search. I have collected some secular readings for you to consider.

Is it appropriate? Only you can decide the answer to this question.

Is it personal to you? This your opportunity to set the tone for your ceremony and marriage.

Is the person giving the reading a confident public speaker?

Length, don't choose something too long or too short. You may consider a couple of shorter readings.

Presentation. (If a loved one is reading, I will print the reading out on nice paper and hand it to them before the ceremony.) Your reader(s) will probably want to be part of your rehearsal so they know when and where to read and how they will fit into your ceremony.

Please take this page in small pieces; come back and pick up where you left off - you have time to decide.

The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery WilliamsWhat is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?" "Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real." "Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit. "Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt." "Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?" "It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.

The Princess Bride by William Goldman​“Do I love you? My God, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches… I have stayed these years in my hovel because of you. I have taught myself languages because of you. I have made my body strong because I thought you might be pleased by a strong body. I have lived my life with only the prayer that some sudden dawn you might glance in my direction. I have not known a moment in years when the sight of you did not send my heart careening against my rib cage. I have not known a night when your visage did not accompany me to sleep. There has not been a morning when you did not flutter behind my waking eyelids…I love you. Okay? Want it louder? I love you. Spell it out, should I? I ell-oh-vee-ee why-oh-you. Want it backward? ​You love I…I’ve been saying it so long to you, you just wouldn’t listen. Every time you said, ‘Farm Boy, do this’, you thought I was answering, ‘As you wish’, but that’s only because you were hearing wrong. ‘I love you’ was what it was, but you never hear

The Invitation, by Oriah Mountain DreamerIt doesn't interest me what you do for a living.I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your hearts longing.It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.It doesn't interest me what planets are square in your moon.I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow,if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed down from fear of further pain.I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving, to hide it, fade it, or fix it.I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being human.It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true.I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true yourself;if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. I want to know if you can be faithful and therefore trustworthy.I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty every day, and if you can source your life on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the moon in God's presence.It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.I want to know if you can get up after a night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done for the children.It doesn't interest me who you know, or how you came here.I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.I want to know if you can be alone with yourself, and if you truly like the company you keep in empty moments.

The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle“You were the one who taught me… I never looked at you without seeing the sweetness of the way the world goes together, or without sorrow for its spoiling. I became a hero to serve you, and all that is like you. Also to find some way of starting a conversation…I would enter your sleep if I could, and guard you there, and slay the thing that hounds you, as I would if it had the courage to face me in fair daylight. But I cannot come in unless you dream of me… I love whom I love.”

From The Irrational Season By Madeleine L'EngleBut ultimately there comes a moment when a decision must be made. Ultimately two people who love each other must ask themselves how much they hope for as their love grows and deepens, and how much risk they are willing to take. It is indeed a fearful gamble. Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created, so that, together we become a new creature.To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take. If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession, but participation. It takes a lifetime to learn another person. When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling, and which implies such risk that it is often rejected.

Carrie's Poem - A Wedding Reading from Sex and the CityHis hello was the end of her endingsHer laugh was their first step down the aisleHis hand would be hers to hold foreverHis forever was as simple as her smileHe said she was what was missingShe said instantly she knewShe was a question to be answeredAnd his answer was "I do"

The Bridge Across Forever by Richard Bach“A soul mate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for who we’re pretending to be. Each unveils the best part of the other. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person we’re safe in our own paradise. Our soul mate is someone who shares our deepest longings, our sense of direction. When we’re two balloons, and together our direction is up, chances are we’ve found the right person. Our soul mate is the one who makes life come to life.”

Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis De BernieresLove is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Those that truly love, have roots that grow towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom have fallen from their branches, they find that they are one tree and not two.

Excerpt from Blood Brother by Elliott ArnoldNow you will feel no rain, for each of you will be the shelter for each other. Now you will feel no cold, for each of you will be the warmth for the other. Now you are two persons, but there is only one life before. Go now to your dwelling place to enter into the days of your life together. And may your days be good and long upon the earth.Treat yourselves and each other with respect, and remind yourselves often of what brought you together. Give the highest priority to the tenderness, gentleness and kindness that your connection deserves. When frustration, difficulty and fear assail your relationship - as they threaten all relationships at one time or another - remember to focus on what is right between you, not only the part which seems wrong. In this way, you can ride out the storms when clouds hide the face of the sun in your lives - remembering that even if you lose sight of it for a moment, the sun is still there. And if each of you takes responsibility for the quality of your life together, it will be marked by abundance and delight. ​

Love Sonnet 17 By Pablo NerudaI do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,in secret, between the shadow and the soul.I love you as the plant that never bloomsbut carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;so I love you because I know no other waythan this: where I does not exist, nor you,so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Excerpt from Plato's Symposium Our original human nature was not like it is now. Human beings each had two sets of arms, two sets of legs, and two faces looking in opposite directions. There were three sexes then: one comprised of two men, one made of two women, and a third made of a man and a woman. Due to the power of these original humans, the Gods began to fear that their reign might be threatened. They sought for a way to end the humans’ insolence without destroying them. So Zeus hurled down his lightning bolts and divided the humans in half.But the Gods—worried that the humans, now alone and losing the will to live, might not survive or multiply—decided on a few repairs.Instead of heads facing backwards or out, they would rotate our heads back forward. They pulled our skin taut and knotted it at the belly button. And most important they left us with a memory, a longing for our original other half.Separated, we are but the indenture of a person, and we are always looking for our other half. And when one of us meets our other half, we pass our whole lives together, desiring that we should be melted into one. One person instead of two. And so that after our death there will be one departed soul instead of two. And the reason is that human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire and pursuit of the whole is called Love.

Excerpt from "An Epithalamion" By Tony KushnerConjunction, assemblage, congress, union:Life isn’t meant to be lived alone.A life apart is a desperate fiction.Life is an intermediate business:a field of light bordered by lovea sea of desire stretched between shores.Marriage is the strength of union.Marriage is the harmonic blend.Marriage is the elegance of counterpoint.Marriage is the faultless, fragile logic of ecology:A reasonable process of give and takeunfolding through cyclical and linear time.A wedding is the conjoining of systems in whichNeither loses its single splendor and both are completelytransformed. As, for example,The dawn is the wedding of the Night and the Day,and is neither, and both,and is, in itself, the most beautiful time,abundant artless beauty,free and careless magnificence.

To Love Is Not To Possess By James Kavanaugh​To love is not to possess,To own or imprison,Nor to lose one's self in another.Love is to join and separate,To walk alone and together,To find a laughing freedomThat lonely isolation does not permit.It is finally to be ableTo be who we really areNo longer clinging in childish dependencyNor docilely living separate lives in silence,It is to be perfectly one's selfAnd perfectly joined in permanent commitmentTo another—and to one's inner self.

Excerpt from "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten" By Robert FulghumAll of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do, and how to be, I learned in Kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sandbox at nursery school.These are the things I learned…Share everything.Play fair.Don't hit people.Put things back where you found them.Clean up your own mess.Don't take things that aren't yours.Say sorry when you hurt somebody.Wash your hands before you eat.Flush.Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Give them to someone who feels sad. Live a balanced life.Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day.Take a nap every afternoon.Be aware of wonder.Remember the little seed in the plastic cup? The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.Everything you need to know is in there somewhere.And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

Time In A Bottle by Jim CroceIf I could save time in a bottle, the first thing that I'd like to do, is to save every day ‘till eternity passes away, just to spend them with you. If I could make days last forever; if words could make wishes come true; I'd save every day like a treasure and then, again, I would spend them with you. If I had a box just for wishes, and dreams that had never come true; the box would be empty, except for the memory of how they were answered by you. But there never seems to be enough time to do the things you want to do, once you find them. I've looked around enough to know that you're the one I want to go through time with.

​Albert Einstein on Relativity Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love. How on earth can you explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love? Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.

Love By Roy CroftI love youNot only for what you are,But for what I amWhen I am with you.I love you,Not only for whatYou have made of yourself,But for whatYou are making of me.I love youFor the part of meThat you bring out;I love youFor putting your handInto my heaped-up heartAnd passing overAll the foolish, weak thingsThat you can’t helpDimly seeing there,And for drawing outInto the lightAll the beautiful belongingsThat no one else had lookedQuite far enough to findI love you because youAre helping me to makeOf the lumber of my lifeNot a tavernBut a temple.Out of the worksOf my every dayNot a reproachBut a song.I love youBecause you have doneMore than any creedCould have doneTo make me good.And more than any fateCould have doneTo make me happy.You have done itWithout a touch,Without a word,Without a sign.You have done itBy being yourself.Perhaps that is whatBeing a friend means,After all.

Song of the Open Road By Walt WhitmanListen, I will be honest with you …I do not offer the old smooth prizesBut offer rough new prizesThese are the days that must happen to you:You shall not heap up what is called riches,You shall scatter with lavish handall that you earn or achieve.However sweet the laid up stores,However convenient the dwelling,you shall not remain there.However sheltered the port,However calm the waters,you shall not anchor there.However welcome the hospitality that welcomes you,you are permitted to receive it but a little while.Afoot and lighthearted, take to the open roadHealthy, free, the world before youThe long brown path before you,Leading wherever you choose.Say only to one another:Camerado, I give you my hand!I give you my love more precious than money;I give you myself before preaching and law:Will you give me yourself?Will you come travel with me?Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in] By e.e. cummingsi carry your heart with me(i carry it inmy heart)i am never without it(anywherei go you go,my dear;and whatever is doneby only me is your doing,my darling)i fearno fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i wantno world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meantand whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows(here is the root of the root and the bud of the budand the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which growshigher than soul can hope or mind can hide)and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart